Peter Attia Drive - James Clear: Building & Changing Habits

it's actually pretty simple

James is the author of the New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits and has become arguably the definitive voice on behavior change

TLDR

• Make the good easy and obvious and the bad impossible

• Environment is much more powerful than discipline

Practical

• To adopt a new habit, the two most important things to do

  • Make it obvious. Make the cue something you can’t miss

  • Make it easy. Scale it down into something that takes less than two minutes to do

• To break a habit

  • Make it invisible/difficult/impossible

  • Cold turkey can work surprisingly well

  • Replace it with a healthier alternative

• Think about the cues in your life you can use to trigger a new behavior you want to adopt (e.g. as soon as I finish making coffee, I will meditate for 5 minutes)

• Craft your environment

  • Make desired behaviors easy and undesired behaviors difficult/impossible

  • Think about who you spend time with

• Try not to let yourself mess up twice

• Think about what identity you want to embrace and what sorts of habits would prove you are that person

Theory

• Identity

  • This is James’ novel input to the field

  • Every time we perform a behavior, it ‘casts a vote’ in favor of being a certain type of person

• Key principles of behavior changes

  • Make the behavior super small

  • Make the behavior easy to do

• There are 4 stages to a behavior

  • Cue: could be an internal sensation (e.g. hunger) or some stimulus

  • Craving: a feeling associated with the cue that makes us want something

  • Response: following the craving we p

    erform an action

  • Reward: that action makes us feel a certain way

• You cannot overestimate the power of environment. You’ll do whatever behavior is easy, for better or worse.

• Progress is super motivating. Even small progress. This is why breaking things down into very easy items is so powerful.